


no dreams in the waves, only monsters

by elliptical



Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [1]
Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Codependency, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deeply Unhealthy Dynamics, Drugs, Gen, Hennessy Is Her Own Content Warning, Negligent Homicide, OC Character Death, Pre-Canon, Pre-Girls, Staged Suicide, this is about killing an innocent person and getting away with it, truly do not know what else i can say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28024716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: She laughed, once, the sound sharper than a gunshot.  She sank into a chair at the table, her shoulders trembling, and she buried her face in her hands.“We’re through,” she said.  “We’re fucked.  We’re done.  We’re so fucking done.”“What the hell is going on?” Jordan demanded.Hennessy swallowed.  Then she laughed again, and gripped the sides of her head, and started to cry.  “We are sofucking fucked.”
Relationships: Hennessy & Jordan (Raven Cycle)
Series: unbecoming jordan hennessy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052732
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	no dreams in the waves, only monsters

**Author's Note:**

> so this series basically just takes a bunch of minor one-off Horrible Implications from call down the hawk and runs with them. decadence

The first time Jordan faked a suicide, she was twelve years old.

So was the victim.

Memory was a funny thing. Years later, multiple bodies later, Jordan recalled the mundane morning with the sharpness of a high-contrast photograph. And she recalled so little of the ugly, dreamlike afternoon that followed.

The day began with the glaring yellow posters advertising her school’s newest anti-drug campaign. Jordan thought the graphic designer should be shot. The margins were an affront to God, and the red borders encased the highlighter glow like a migraine, and the headers were written in _rainbow Comic Sans._ Maybe she was a pretentious preteen, but at least she didn't type things in rainbow Comic Sans.

She passed four of these monstrosities before she even entered the building. Someone had spilled a Slush Puppie in the entryway, and so Jordan joined the gleeful throng of kids trying to skate through the mess. 

She nearly broke her ankle when her sneaker stuck flat to the floor instead of sliding. To avoid wrenching the joint, she let the momentum carry her forward, a movement like a tumble over bike handlebars. She caught herself on the sticky ground with both palms, shifted her center of gravity, and somersaulted to safety. 

Cold syrup soaked her ass, but the onlookers broke into racuous applause, as though the stunt had broken Olympic records. In fairness, it wasn’t hard to entertain kids her age. Jordan stood and turned and bowed, all flourish. When the aggrieved custodian arrived on scene, she darted for cover like a fugitive escaping the law. She ducked into a bathroom, giggling and breathless, and she didn’t even care that she didn’t have a spare uniform with her.

She was senselessly, stupidly happy.

Later, she thought that she may have overinflated the joy of that specific moment. Memory was an unreliable thing, too. It liked to craft whatever story made sense, whether or not the details were true.

But Jordan couldn’t have fabricated the warm glow of that whole time period. She was a child beloved by her peers. She was a model student. She was her art teacher’s darling, because she could follow university-level discussions of impressionist technique. She was her English teacher’s malediction, because she’d sacrificed four straight months of lunches to study the science of handwriting, just to forge passes with his signature. All the same, even when he caught her red-handed, he’d been so impressed by the dedication that he hadn’t even reported her.

Jordan was always getting away with stuff like that. She had a gift.

During those early, sunny days, Hennessy lived a life almost entirely divorced from Jordan’s. Hennessy did the homework and Jordan attended the classes, because Hennessy hated school, and Jordan... didn’t. The arrangement gave them both more freedom than other kids. Hours of stolen free time filled both respective schedules, unwritten, limitless.

To Jordan, the arrangement had felt like a game.

To Hennessy, it had not.

Jordan always labeled that morning - the stained skirt, the impromptu gymnastics, the thunderous applause, the hideous yellow posters - as the Last Morning.

Jordan’s phone rang after lunch.

Technically, she and Hennessy shared two phones. There was the official mobile, paid by Bill Dower’s credit card, and the supplementary line, paid by cash. The second model was one of those cheap disposable numbers with the pre-paid minutes. They almost never used it.

Hennessy always insisted on keeping the real line with her while Jordan was at school. This never bothered Jordan; after all, Hennessy’s non-segmented schedule meant she was more likely to _use_ the device.

The pre-paid emergency line was in Jordan’s backpack. Hennessy was the only one with the number. Jordan kept the phone on her in case Hennessy ever needed her. And Hennessy never called, because Hennessy didn’t need Jordan.

That day, the line rang.

“I screwed up,” Hennessy’s voice said. It crackled oddly through the speaker. “I screwed up. I screwed up, oh, God. Oh God. Help me. Please come home, I - I can’t - Jordan, Jordan, _Jordan,_ I _screwed up._ ”

So of course Jordan went home. She faked a stomach bug and hitched a ride from the art teacher, since the woman had a few minutes before her next class. She gave the nurse Bill’s defunct mobile number, just to make sure he didn’t hear about her departure. She arrived at the house, thanked her teacher, squared her shoulders, and headed in.

Hennessy was pacing the length of the kitchen. She whirled as the door opened, wild-eyed, and then she shook her head as if shaking off a dream. She raked her fingers through her hair. The coils were far more tangled than Jordan’s own - hadn’t she been taking care of herself at all? She laughed, once, the sound sharper than a gunshot. She sank into a chair at the table, her shoulders trembling, and she buried her face in her hands.

“We’re through,” she said. “We’re fucked. We’re done. We’re so fucking done.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jordan demanded.

Hennessy swallowed. Then she laughed again, and gripped the sides of her head, and started to cry. “We are so _fucking fucked._ ”

_“Tell me.”_

Hennessy showed her instead.

This was where Jordan’s memory played tricks, years later. She could never quite recall the moment of realization, or the shape of the dead girl’s face, or the color of the bedspread below her. A stranger’s corpse lay on the mattress where Jordan slept, and the room was starting to smell like shit.

“I can’t wake her _up,_ ” Hennessy wailed, plaintive, as though she’d called Jordan to resurrect the dead.

“Why didn’t you call 999?” Later Jordan remembered _that._ She remembered the hysterical pitch to her voice, the dizzying tilt of the floor, the way her fingers bruised Hennessy’s shoulders as Jordan shook her. “ _What did you do?_ ”

“I’m _sorry!_ ” Hennessy screamed. She was too loud. Jordan froze. She was too damn loud, and too far gone to care. Her face was a ruin of snot and tears and spit, her chest contracting with tight little gasps. She hyperventilated her way into a coughing fit, which at least was better than the screaming. She coughed and coughed and coughed, and she sagged to her knees on the fluffy bedroom carpet, and she retched. “I can’t breathe,” she sobbed. “I can’t _breathe._ ”

The fact of the corpse was insane. The entire situation was insane. And yet the _most_ insane thing was the lightswitch flip of Jordan’s priorities. The anger deserted her, and the fear, and the nausea. She lay down on top of Hennessy and pinned her to the ground, and she tucked her head against Hennessy’s shoulder, and she held Hennessy’s hand. She breathed and shook and stayed right there until Hennessy’s keening died.

Now that both living girls had calmed down, Hennessy finally explained.

The girl: a homeschooled neighborhood kid from three doors down the street. “Her parents don’t pay any fucking _attention,_ ” Hennessy said, “she’s here with me all the _time._ We’ve always been _fine._ ”

Jordan had not even known that the neighbors had a kid.

“Why didn’t you call 999?” Jordan tried again, gentler this time. “How did she die?”

Pills, Hennessy told her, or maybe something in the whiskey they’d stolen.

_Pills?_

Hennessy sighed and stood, expressionless. She beckoned for Jordan to follow her into their shared bathroom. Once inside, she stared at her puffy face in the mirror, and for a moment Jordan thought she meant to smash the glass. Then she reached up and wiggled her arm into a long, skinny, ragged gap between the back of the cabinet and the plastered wall. 

She removed a series of little plastic bottles, one or two at a time. She handed them all to Jordan, until Jordan couldn’t balance the pile in her arms. Hennessy lined them up on the sink after that.

Jordan hadn’t known about this hiding place, either.

Most of the bottles were almost empty, with two or three pills rattling around the bottom. A few were stuffed full of brightly colored capsules. Jordan studied the labels. She wasn’t familiar with all of the substances, but she recognized several names from the godawful anti-drug posters.

She started to laugh. Apparently it was her turn for hysteria. Hennessy stared like she’d lost her mind, which was fair. When Jordan kept laughing, high and breathless, Hennessy slapped her.

“It’s just,” Jordan wheezed, tears welling in her eyes, hiccuping giggles escaping around the words, “I don’t think the school drug programs equip us very well for these sorts of situations.”

“She doesn’t _go_ to school,” Hennessy snapped, misunderstanding the sentiment. “Didn’t. Didn’t go. We were just hanging out-”

(Jordan solved the mystery later. Benzodiazepines and opioids and alcohol were not meant to mix. Especially not in doubled and tripled doses. Especially not in a prepubescent body. Apparently neither Hennessy nor her friend had ever cared to learn the rules of self-destruction. Apparently Jordan had never cared to notice.)

Hennessy had provided the killing cocktail. Jordan didn’t know where she’d gotten the stockpile, or _why_. She _did_ know that Hennessy’s life would be over if the truth surfaced. That was what happened to people when their callous negligence killed their friends.

Hennessy and Jordan were the same person.

So Jordan’s life hung in the balance, too.

The girl couldn’t have died here. Hennessy and Jordan couldn’t have known her. Her death couldn’t have witnesses.

Jordan’s mind whirled, considering and discarding potential disposal methods. Every half-formed plan was fraught with risk. Too many variables, too much travel, too little information. It wasn’t like “murder” was on the list of fun pranks Jordan got away with on the regular. The disappearance of a neighborhood child would mean investigations, interviews, requisitions of CCTV footage. Even if the corpse was never found.

If the girl had died alone, though -

Jordan swallowed. “Can we get her home? Inside, I mean - is the house empty? Door unlocked?”

“I think so.”

“CCTV?”

“Not between our driveway and hers.”

Jordan didn’t ask why Hennessy knew. Hennessy seemed to know a lot of things Jordan had never even considered.

“Home security system?”

“Nope. No dog, either.”

“Do you have any writing samples?”

Hennessy blinked. Jordan had lost her. “Sorry?”

“Her _handwriting._ Do you have her handwriting. Did she ever - did she scribble on your easel, or use one of your notebooks, or write you a letter, or leave an old assignment lying around-”

“I - I - I don’t know.”

“Find me something.”

Hennessy came through. She handed Jordan a Post-It list of cute Hollywood actors scribbled in sparkly blue ink. Little doodles studded the margins, bubble hearts floating above every I.

Jordan looked at it for a long, long time before she went to work.

So it was that they carried a dead child down the street in broad daylight. The corpse, at least, was concealed inside a giant rolled-up rug. They entered and exited the house without issue. They set the stage with a sideways version of the truth. The only real difference was that now the victim had died in her own bed.

And she’d taken a moment to tell her parents goodbye.

The ambulance arrived in the early evening. A police car followed. Jordan watched from the upstairs window, but nothing seemed to be happening except the flash of the vehicle lights. 

Then a body bag emerged on a stretcher, wheeled by somber paramedics. A keening howl split the night. A woman stumbled shoeless from the door, collapsing in the driveway-

That was when Jordan left to throw up.

She skipped school the next day. She laid in bed on the newly-laundered quilt that Hennessy had washed for her. She watched the sunlight move across the wall. She didn’t eat, not even when Hennessy baked double-fudge brownies from scratch and offered Jordan the entire plate. She didn’t move.

When Hennessy returned a few hours later to find the plate untouched, she climbed onto the mattress beside Jordan. “I think it’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think anyone suspects. She had problems, you know, no one really notices girls with... The note was brilliant, by the way. Stole the show. Thank you. You’re gorgeous.”

The dead girl had been Hennessy’s friend.

Hennessy didn’t seem to understand the loss.

She laid beside Jordan for a half hour, brushing Jordan’s hair back with her fingertips, the gentlest of soothing scritches.

Jordan didn’t speak. There was nothing to say.

Hennessy broke the silence herself, eventually, sniffling. She swiped her sleeve over her eyes. “Are you mad at me?”

 _Mad?_

Jordan hadn’t even considered the potential for anger. This thing they’d done, this lie they’d created, was too horrible to internalize. No, she wasn’t angry. No, Hennessy wasn’t blameless. Jordan wasn’t sure how to feel anything at all.

She met Hennessy’s anxious, teary gaze. “Why do you have those pills?”

It was the first time she’d spoken in hours, and her voice came out a croak. She hadn’t had any water since the night before. Everything inside her was a shriveling husk. A dull headache throbbed in her temples.

“Don’t ask me that, Jordan,” Hennessy said, and she sounded like she meant it. “Please don’t ask me that.”

“Okay,” Jordan said. “Why did you give them to her?”

Hennessy flinched. She rolled over, away from Jordan, and buried her face against the mattress. “I screwed up.”

Jordan hadn’t meant to wound her, but she couldn’t pretend that the accident wasn’t Hennessy’s fault.

“Don’t ever make me do this again,” she said. 

Hennessy drew her knees to her chest. She hugged her arms around herself, face smushed into her pajama pants. She looked small, suddenly. A tearjerker ad for a children’s hospital. Wasted, exhausted, afraid. Alone.

“What if I can’t stop?” she whispered.

This, finally, stirred some familiar emotion. Jordan wrapped her arms tight around Hennessy before she could question the decision, pressing her forehead to the back of Hennessy’s skull. 

Hennessy’s breath hitched. She uncurled in slow inches, her body relaxing against Jordan’s, her eyes closing.

“You can stop,” Jordan said fiercely. “I’ll stop you, if it comes to that. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll fix everything. I’ll fix everything, Heloise, I promise. Trust me.”

Every word was a lie, of course.

Jordan just didn’t know that until later.


End file.
